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Juvenile Injustice

Gladys Carrión, New York’s reform-minded commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, has been calling on the state to close many of its remote, prison-style juvenile facilities and shift resources and children to therapeutic programs located in their communities. Her efforts have met fierce and predictably self-interested resistance from the unions representing workers in juvenile prisons and their allies in Albany.

A recent series of damning reports have underscored the flaws in New York’s juvenile justice system and the urgent need to shut down these facilities. The governor and the State Legislature need to pay attention.

A report by a task force appointed by Gov. David Paterson describes a failing system that damages young people, fails to curb recidivism and eats up millions of tax dollars. Children should be confined only when they present a clear threat to public safety. But the most recent statistics show that 53 percent of the youths admitted to New York’s institutional facilities were placed there for minor nonviolent infractions.

The report also says that judges often send children to these facilities because local communities are unable to help them with mental problems or family issues. But once they are locked up, these young people rarely get the psychiatric care or special education they need because the institutions lack trained staff.

A report from the Justice Department, which has threatened to sue the state, documents the use of excessive and injury-causing force against children in juvenile facilities, often for minor offenses such as laughing too loudly or refusing to get dressed. And last week, the Legal Aid Society of New York City filed a class-action suit on behalf of youths in confinement, arguing that conditions in the system violate their constitutional rights.

Not surprisingly, these institutions do a terrible job of rehabilitation. According to a study of children released from custody between 1991 and 1995, 89 percent of the boys and 81 percent of the girls were eventually rearrested. New York’s facilities are so disastrous and inhumane that state officials recently asked the courts to refrain from sending children to them, except in cases in which they presented a clear danger to the public.

Mr. Paterson’s task force was rightly impressed with Missouri’s juvenile justice system. It has adopted smaller regional facilities that focus on rehabilitation and house troubled youths as close to home as possible in order to involve parents and community groups in the therapeutic process. Missouri also has cut recidivisim rates by smoothing re-entry and helping young people with drug treatment, education or job placement.

New York clearly needs to follow Ms. Carrión’s advice and adopt a Missouri-style system. That means the Legislature will finally have to put the needs of the state’s children ahead of the politically powerful unions and upstate lawmakers who want to preserve jobs — and the disastrous status quo — at all costs.

A version of this editorial appears in print on January 6, 2010, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Juvenile Injustice. Today's Paper|Subscribe